Village Pride Gets New Life

Wheeling Voters Have Helped Give The Chevy Chase Country Club, With Its Spotted Past, A Promising Future.

November 25, 1998|By Anika M. Scott, Tribune Staff Writer.

Some say Al Capone ran the place, or at least went there for some bootleg booze. Chicago ward bosses used it for fundraising dinners, and couples on stilts once danced in the ballroom to big-band music.

The Chevy Chase Country Club in Wheeling has seen high times and high jinks as a favorite spot for society and shadier types since the 1920s. Now, after 80 years, three names and maybe an FBI raid or two, the club with the hunting lodge facade is being restored to its former glory.

The Wheeling Park District is spending $3.9 million to bring the building up to code and to improve service for the wedding receptions, class reunions and golf outings that produce an annual profit of more than $60,000.

Voters agreed to a tax increase last year and approved spending about $1.2 million from taxes on the restoration. The balance will come from other funds, Park District Director Karop Bavougian said.

Voters passed the tax in a referendum with one stipulation.

"The voters' wishes were that we not alter the facade" on Milwaukee Avenue, said Mark Harrison, Park District director of parks and planning. "More than any other building in town, it has a historical element to it that says: This is Wheeling."

The club's ballroom, which still hosts dances on Wednesdays, will remain virtually the same, with its woodwork restored to its original luster. The two-story atrium known as the Abbey also will stay as is.

The Gable Room will be divided, with the eatery on one side and additional restrooms, cloak room and an expanded golf pro shop on the other. Locker rooms for golfers will be built in the basement, and an elevator will connect the three floors. The second floor will contain catering and golf offices.

The Wayside and Devonshire dining rooms will be combined, almost tripling seating capacity to 200, and a movable wall will be added to accommodate smaller groups.

Chevy Chase is remembered for its sometimes seedy past, but its beginnings were far different. The club started in the early 1920s as Columbian Gardens, founded by the Knights of Columbus as a place where short-panted golfers and Catholic families could socialize.

A 1928 club newsletter told members that Columbian was a place for priests, "where they can relax without feeling someone objects to their presence."

Prohibition brought an end to that genteel existence.

Late in 1928, William "Big Bill" Johnson and William "Billy" Skidmore--reputedly an organized crime operative who collected from brothels and casinos and made payoffs to lawmen--bought the club and changed its name to Bon Aire.

By 1930, the new owners had added a ballroom, several dining rooms, private second-floor rooms and basement dressing rooms, storage, and an escape tunnel that was said to lead out to the 18th hole of the golf course.

They added even more mysterious features: a room without doors or windows, a staircase leading nowhere and 6-inch thick doors.

The club likely became a storehouse for illegal alcohol, said Vern Verstraete, unofficial club historian.

"There were all sorts of stories going around," he said. "People said there were seven stairways, and that people would be on the roof under the parapets with search lights for when the FBI came in off the green for a raid."

In the 1940s, the Bon Aire owners went to prison for tax evasion. Skidmore died there, but Johnson served 20 months and returned to run the club until he died in 1952.

His brother, Joseph, then took over and was determined to clean up Bon Aire's image. He started by changing the club's name to Chevy Chase, after a famous English hunting ground.

He returned the club to its more wholesome roots, hosting the Wheeling Fire Department's annual ball, Wheeling High School madrigal dinners and summer stock theater under a pavilion, said Linda Reading, director of the Wheeling Historical Museum.

Johnson died in the 1970s, and the club fell into decay.

In 1977, the outcome of a referendum allowed the village to purchase the club for $3.8 million and turn it over to the Park District. Bavougian said he hopes the work will be finished in time for a New Year's Eve bash in 1999.